Electronic devices are often implanted within a human or animal for acquiring biological data or for providing therapy. It is often desirable for such an implanted device to wirelessly communicate with a remote external device. For example, the implanted device may communicate the acquired biological data to the remote device for processing and/or display or other user output. In another example, the implanted device may communicate to the remote device information about how the implanted device is configured. In a further example, the external device may communicate to the implanted device instructions for performing subsequent operations. Because the implanted device is often battery-powered, there is a need for the communication protocol to operate without consuming excessive energy, which would deplete the battery and, therefore, shorten the usable life of the implanted device. However, such low-power communication techniques may be particularly sensitive to environmental noise. Such noise can disrupt the data communication and can even corrupt the data being transmitted. Therefore, there is also a need for a low-power communication protocol that allows any such detected noise to be evaluated to determine whether the data being transmitted risks being corrupted.